The New Sidekick
by The Blue Fenix
Summary: Direct sequel to "the New Kid." In 1999, an ex-SEAL named Clarence accepts the post of Middleman trainee. His troubles are only beginning. AU to the series finale, different previous Middleman.
1. Chapter 1

The Middleman was semiconscious with pain by the time he heard their pickup vehicle coming. He roused himself; the new kid's reactions could tell him a lot. "There's our ride."

The ex-SEAL heard it too. He shook his head. "There's nowhere to put a chopper down here except in the highway. Anyway, that one's miles away."

"Bet you half a dollar?" The Middleman sat upright.

It looked like a helicopter, all right, its chassis just big enough to fit in their tiny clearing. Sounded like one, to a casual observer who wasn't used to the earth-shattering noise they made in real life instead of on television. Even that half-hearted noise faded out in the last few yards of descent. The body of the 'chopper' landed, apparently weightless, beside the two men. The much larger circle of whirling blades, which looked solid and real, passed through the trees without a quiver.

The Middleman watched the kid watching it, fitting a flood of new ideas into his world view. _I wonder how I looked to The Old Man my first day. I should have asked when I had the chance. _He shut his grief down; they were busy.

"Right." The kid drew the word out thoughtfully. "Anything else I should know?"

"You'll still be learning the day you retire." A stab of guilt; 'expendable' was an understatement for the career path the Middleman was luring this kid into. "I know I still am. But you meet interesting people." He gestured just as the side door of the chopper came open.

His robot support staff hadn't dressed for the occasion. She wore a mu-mu in an explosion of primary colors and house slippers with pink flowers on them. "You look like hammer-pounded crap," she snarled at the Middleman. "Smashed the leg again, huh? When are you gonna let me whack it off and build you something useful?"

"It's not bad. Maybe a couple of pins knocked loose." He didn't want to hash this out again, or not in front of the kid. "This is Ida. Don't worry, you get used to her."

Ida's sneer assigned the new arrival last place in a centuries-long list of trainees who hadn't impressed her. Which was partly a front. She'd gone over his dossier as thoroughly as the Middleman himself, leading up to this, but hazing the rookies was a legitimate part of her job. "Huh. Where'd you find him, nickel beer night at Chippendale's?"

The kid let that go by. The Middleman provisionally awarded him another point. "Ida, this is Clarence..."

The younger man interrupted. "You said you people don't use your names."

"This ain't the Foreign Legion, dimples," Ida snarled. "_He's_ just the Middleman. _You_ haven't earned squat from me. And just so you know, taking a swing at the chain of command doesn't win brownie points." That taunt hit harder; his mouth set in a hard line. Ida kept the pressure on. "You'll be Clarence and like it until you deserve something else. Don't think you can slide by on having big muscles, either. He's done things half dead that you'll be lucky to match after a couple of years training."

That might be too much hazing; the Middleman started to intervene. But the kid let go of his tension all at once. His voice dropped into complete frankness, no emotional defenses. "I saw. Why do you think I'm here?"

The old battle-bot was speechless, for once. The Middleman turned enough to hide a smile. _This is going to be good_. He tried not to read too much into the heart-wringing vote of confidence. "The green box strapped to the wall is the first aid kit," he said. "Give me a hand getting in."

The kid barely spoke on the three-hour 'helicopter' ride. The Middleman dozed most of the way, dulled by a combination of pain and painkillers. Every time he glanced at the opposite jump seat the kid was wide awake, looking around with mild interest as if on a bus ride. That under-reaction couldn't possibly be real, but the Middleman had no idea what was hiding behind it. _No question he's got potential. Damned if I know what he'll do with it._

"Home sweet headquarters." Ida had bullied the Middleman into a powered wheelchair, his bad leg elevated. He gestured expansively with the hand not on the controls. "Ten levels, hundreds of rooms, more than half of it underground. We keep a few pieces of bigger gear elsewhere, like the submarine and the fighter jet."

"Hunh." The kid might possibly not believe that part. "Who do you work for?"

"Aliens," the Middleman said cheerfully. "Helping us through a tricky stage in our development without breaking the Prime Directive. Or time travelers from the future. Sometimes about 2 a.m. God looks like an awfully good bet. Your guess is as good as mine. I've never met them. Ida passes on orders, runs the home base for me. And for the Old Man before me, and his Middleman before him … all the way back."

The kid's eyes shifted to Ida. "Who do you work for?"

Ida snorted. "Yeah. Like I've never heard _that _question before. Maybe it's an intelligence test. Keep guessing, bright eyes."

His look went back to the Middleman. "You risk your life and you don't even know why?"

"Who," the Middleman corrected. "I know _why._ You got a taste of that tonight. That werewolf would have killed again, created other werewolves … what's more, destroyed mankind's comfortable sense that our species knows what it's doing and can handle its own destiny. We stopped all that harm, when no one else could have. Our motto is 'fighting evil so you don't have to.' That about sums it up."

"A secret weirdness-fighting society has a motto?"

"A secret motto," the Middleman conceded. The younger man rolled his eyes.

The Middleman turned his wheelchair toward HEYDAR, meaning to start off with a quick tour of the main control room. The leg-elevating section of the chair whacked against the corner of Ida's desk; he turned white. "Sickbay," Ida ordered. "You're so set on keeping that leg, you have to baby it. I say we give Junior some money for a hotel and toss him out. Maybe he'll keep right on going."

The Middleman shifted more upright in his seat, clamped down on the pain that came in response. The kid was watching him. "You look beat," the Middleman said, almost in a normal tone. "She's right, you need rest. There are several bedrooms two levels up." He nodded toward the stairs. "You can have any room that's unlocked." He glanced at Ida. She grumbled and flipped several switches on a console.

The kid looked down at the Middleman's leg, understood him enough to hide his pity. "Do you need any help?"

"Tomorrow," the Middleman said. "Right now, get settled in."

Clarence Peter Conrad, Junior (no, not junior any more), ex-SEAL, ex-son, current … whatever this was. Werewolf hunter? He felt dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with the 'helicopter' ride. As this Middleman-guy had said, he found bedrooms upstairs. He picked a smaller one the shape of a shoe box, with a single bed and a sink in one corner. It was actually smaller than the by-the-week motel near the pool hall, although much cleaner. _I certainly managed to get good and lost this time._

His curiosity about the job, the guy, the whole weirdly altered world, was ebbing as the exertion caught up with him. Clarence wondered if curiosity was enough to keep him going. That hadn't been too far off the target, _something to live for or something to die from. _

His bad luck that after eight years as a SEAL, he'd come out pretty close to indestructible. A gun would solve his problems, but he couldn't – yet – face mishandling one. He didn't have many other options. With his training, he was too likely to survive anything involving long falls or deep water. So the pool-shark thing was the best he'd figured out for freezing his life in place for a while. Money wasn't a problem. He didn't need much; a bed, a shower, some way to keep his mind off things.

He'd kind of been hoping that the weird guy with the limp was a serial killer or some other freak. Either his problems would be over, or a full-stakes fight would give him something else to think about. Maybe a life-or-death situation would clarify which alternative he wanted. When this Middleman had turned out – apparently – crazy but harmless, Clarence was so infuriated he really would have made the poor guy walk back to town.

Except he'd been wrong in every detail. The crippled ex-cop wasn't crazy or harmless. He'd misread the entire world just as badly. The dangers in life weren't endless variations on human beings; other things were out there. Maybe he could still take action, do something that had value. For his country, for people in danger.

He still didn't know the guy's name; he apparently didn't have one. _I'm just the Middleman_. That was tempting, on a profound level. Do a job, be a job, with no past and no separate future... he fell asleep thinking about it.

Ida lifted the Middleman onto a padded table and sliced the pants off his damaged leg. She frowned, turned her attention to his bitten arm. The bandage over the werewolf bite was wet again. "You can't toss yourself around like this and get away with it." She cut through the gauze, started picking silver bullets out of the wound with forceps. "You've got to take it easy."

"The red balls keep coming. I've got to answer them. Anyway, I have help now. He's going to be brilliant, Ida. SEAL training is as good as anything we have, in many ways; I can take him to the field right away. And you saw his IQ, the book work is going to go fast. Get Sensei Ping on the phone tomorrow. We'll catch cases as they come in, split half physical training and half archive time on the quiet days..."

"Ray." He looked up. Ida hadn't used his name since the previous Middleman disappeared. "He's straight. All the way, no gray areas."

"I read the same dossier you did." When Ida still stared at him, "Dammit. After all we've been through, are you saying I'd compromise the safety of Earth for a _date_?"

"No. You'll play this by the book if it kills you," Ida said. "I'm saying … it will. It kills all of you; you're only human." As Ida was not. "At some point I'm going to be stuck with the pretty boy in charge. Can he do the job?"

"He can. I think he wants to." The SEAL had said, _you have something worth taking risks for … I used to._ "He has the hunger. He has the skills."

"That's only a starting point," Ida said.

"We all start somewhere. Give him a chance."

Ida snorted and turned her attention back to the Middleman's wounds. "I catch you moping about his beautiful butt, I'm going to slap you in the head."

"Yes, ma'am," the Middleman agreed.

The Middleman's apprentice woke with a start; someone was in the room. He sat up, hands in a guard position. "Yeah, like I'm impressed," Ida's voice grated over him. "Not into _that_, either; cover your shame."

He looked down. He'd slept naked; the thin sheet didn't hide much. He brought one knee up. "What do you want?"

Ida snorted. "Nothin' you've got. Brought you some stuff." She put several loaded hangars onto a closet rod in a bare alcove at one end of the room, laid folded clothes on the foot of the bed. "Get decent and get downstairs. Nobody cares if you've got your beauty sleep." She looked around the room. "You didn't try to grab the penthouse suite, I'll give you that," Ida said grudgingly. "Sure you can cope without a couple of full-length mirrors?"

_I don't care what I look like. _ A few people had assumed otherwise, in the past, but not as persistently as this Ida person. "It's fine." He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

As he'd hoped, she backed up. "Seen enough, thanks." Ida left.

New underwear, his size. Black cotton socks. Black slacks. A white dress shirt, just slightly loose in the chest; maybe they'd gotten his sizes somehow from service records. The shirt was rigged for cufflinks. The links themselves were shield shapes, engraved with a large M and a tiny Latin motto he couldn't puzzle out. The metal was exactly the same dull silver as the band of the watch the Middleman had given him last night.

A gray-olive jacket of some heavy fabric that wasn't wool. It felt strangely slippery under his fingers; he suspected fireproofing. Black tie. A tie tack had the same M logo as the cufflinks; he left it off. Black leather shoes, suitable for a cop walking a beat in the 1950's.

The effect was vaguely like a cross between World War II uniform and a state trooper. The style was distinctive, but the drab colors seemed to blend into the walls. Good. He took the jacket off again and shaved with a razor that had come with the clothes. The outfit wasn't anything he'd call _normal_, but it was tidy and comfortable. He noticed another new item in the room, a wooden crate about two feet high; Ida must have brought it in before he'd woken up. The lid was already loose. Jeans, t-shirts, a denim jacket, work boots … all the scant minimum of things he'd left behind in the motel on the east coast. Everything else had been given away or thrown away or passively left behind when he'd left the Navy. _I must really have been planning to die after all._ It seemed so trivial now.

He fished into the crate and brought out one item, his father's military bugle. The brass was showing through the silver plate at the mouthpiece. He wondered idly what had happened to everything else, back at the house he still thought of as home, after his father died. He hadn't gone back; he couldn't. Not unless he broke his word, and risked prison, and frightened all the people who used to know him. _I want to be a man who keeps his word. _ That had been the core of being a SEAL, to him. _I want..._

He set the bugle gently on the bedside table. Carried the rest of the crate outside and abandoned it in the hallway.


	2. Chapter 2

The Middleman who had once been Ray had set HEYDAR to keep track of his new apprentice. When Clarence left his bedroom, the video screens picked him up. The uniform suited him, Ray thought. He moved with more confidence than he had last night. The Middleman put that down to a hunger for identity, for a place and purpose in the world to replace the one the SEALs had given him. Clarence did a little scouting on the way downstairs. He didn't find much – a few empty on-site suites and long-term record storage. When he reached a locked door, such as Ray's own room, he tried it once and left it alone.

The Middleman went on back to a narrow kitchen, which served as a bare-bones 'break room' behind the main control room, before Clarence made it all the way downstairs. By the time he heard the other man moving around on the main floor, he was scrambling eggs. "Back here." The kid entered the room. "Morning. Sleep well?"

"You live here?" Clarence was studying him in return.

The Middleman shrugged. "I used to have a house on the north side of town. After I got hurt, it was too much extra work. Ida looks after me pretty well, but she just does not _get_ it about food." He stirred with the spatula. "Which reminds me. Draw an advance on your pay if you need to; you can start looking for your own place anytime."

A pained look, quickly hidden._ And that's no wonder._ Between the things he couldn't say about himself and the things he didn't want to, living among strangers would be an ordeal for Clarence.

"I'm in no hurry," he confirmed.

The eggs were ready. The Middleman turned the heat off. "Coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"Then there's milk, water, or orange juice. Plates are in the top cabinet, far left."

"Milk."

They got things set up on the wide wooden table in the control room. "So, Clarence."

"Please don't call me that," the new kid said quickly.

The Middleman took a bite of eggs. "Nor Pete, I assume." The look was answer enough. "Then we have a problem. I didn't spell it out last night, maybe, but there's only one Middleman at a time. You can't have my name until I'm done with it. And you're a bit mature to be Bucky, the Boy Sidekick."

"Why don't you pick something," the younger man said. He sounded indifferent.

"Using 'hey, you' would get you killed, some bad day." _And the Middlemen can't afford to kill you until we've gotten every bit of use out of you. _"So. Navy. You must have questions." Less an offer than a demand; the Middleman let the silence hang.

It didn't seem to frighten the kid. "How did you get this job?"

Fair enough. "The last case I worked as a cop, the first as a Middleman, was a series of murders. The victims were ripped apart, like by wild animals. My partner thought all along something was off... he was right."

The new kid searched for a halfway intelligent remark. "Werewolves?"

"Not that time," the Middleman said. "Poachers. Aliens who wanted to hunt the 'most dangerous game.' We and the Middleman-then were stepping all over each other's toes on the case. My partner and I arrested him as a suspect at one point. Naturally he got himself out in no time. Once we all got pointed in the same direction..."

He breathed. _Shouldn't be so hard to say, after all this time. _Maybe spending so much time alone kept the wound from healing. "It should have been Benny in this job, not me. He was … a pure soul. Pure integrity. You'd have liked him; the Old Man did. Smart, too. He figured out the alien's strategy a second before I did … took an energy blast meant for me."

The Middleman's eyes were fixed on nothing, his expression frozen. "When the dust settled, I didn't have the heart to go back to Chicago PD. The Old Man – the Middleman – offered me another choice. God, I needed one right then."

"I'm sorry," the kid said quietly.

The Middleman – Ray – weighed his options and took a chance. "That's the other thing. He wasn't just my work partner." No dossier was perfect; nothing in the record suggested where his maybe-apprentice stood on this subject.

Ray braced himself. _The fact is, I've got nerve damage beyond the leg. Even if you wanted to be worried... _His face burned with anticipated humiliation.

"Oh." A pause. "I'm sorry." After another, "I was out of line, back at the bar last night." _If that's a pass, I'd feel terrible breaking your other leg._

Ray felt flustered, off balance. "Listen, don't worry about anything..."

The kid shrugged. "I've seen integrity before, too."

The fragile, painful compliment hung in the air between them. Ray found it best to put his Middleman-armor back on. "The code name for a mission is a red ball," he said. "We'll take those as they come. You've got enough chops to manage in the field, if you can pick up your cues. The cardinal rule is, nobody knows about the Middlemen. We have a whole range of false identities to cover us while we're doing our jobs. But we don't get a red ball every day; sometimes not every week. Any down time we get, we'll use for your training. Old case files, interstellar law, languages..." he rattled off a series of Arabic syllables.

The kid looked embarrassed. "I caught about half of that."

"Don't worry; we've got a machine in the basement that can pour a language into your head like filling a water balloon. The down side is, it'll put you in a coma for at least six hours at a time. So let's not rush that part of the training."

"Fine," the kid said. Sincerely.

The Middleman sympathized. "There's also physical training," he said. "The most dangerous man alive, Sensei Ping, is on retainer with us. He'll be here in a few days to work on your hand-to-hand."

The kid sat up a little straighter. He would have denied being arrogant, but every line of his body showed a fierce, feral confidence. "I'm okay, thanks."

_You'll see._ "Humor me," the Middleman said.

[*]

Days passed. 'Navy' used the language-learning machine for the first time, for classical Latin; all the Middle-archives before 1603 were written in that language. He branched out quickly from his reading assignments to wandering through the records for pleasure. The technology available to the Middlemen of each era had no connection whatsoever to the outside world around them. It was fascinating reading a medieval man's attempt to make sense of what he recognized as computer data banks or reconstructive micro-surgery. (If he wasn't making the same mistake himself, casting something impossibly advanced into terms he could understand.) Ida was in all the records, centuries of them, with no sign of the name passing to new incumbents as the Middleman's did. Middlemen wrote the archive records, not Ida. She clearly knew, and wasn't telling, much more than the humans on the job. That gap seemed to give her a lot of entertainment.

He buried himself in the records room. When he felt stale, or when the Middleman dropped casual hints about not doing too much at once, he put the same focus into the small gym. He gained back the muscle mass he'd lost after the Navy, and a little more. Slightly larger uniform shirts appeared in his closet. The treadmill had a 'virtual reality' feature that projected images of any location he could name, including alien worlds. He spent hour on hour running the canyons of Mars at a marathoner's steady pace. The virtual travels compensated for the fact that he almost never left the building. Things he needed, from clean sweats to shaving cream, tended to appear in his room or locker by themselves. Things he only wanted, he was teaching himself not to need.

His cleansing process went further than outward appearances. The Middleman was present, steadily working with arm weights, when he missed his step in the gym and went stumbling backward at the treadmill's full speed. Hot words welled up inside him. "Da..."

Met cool self control. "darn ding danged gadget," he finished, a little awkwardly.

The Middleman raised an eyebrow. "Gosh darn it to freaking heck, indeed," he agreed. "Are you all right?"

The younger man chose to misunderstand. "Right ankle's a little stiff. Old damage. I should stretch more."

The Middleman watched him, thoughtfully. "Nobody could say you're not fit. Take five. We haven't talked much lately."

"Have my studies been acceptable?" The younger man drew himself up.

The Middleman used a word his student had sworn off, top of the list. "You know damn well they have been. Look … kid. This job eats enough of us alive. There's no need to go diving down its throat first thing."

Honesty was the only way. "I want to be the man you hired. Good enough to be a Middleman someday."

"I'll be the judge of that, and I say you are." the Middleman said. "Be a little kinder to yourself; you'll last longer."

_You don't know. You can't._ "Yes, sir."

The Middleman sighed. "Lunch. You're coming with me."

[*]

They went to a sandwich shop several miles away from headquarters. The other diners treated the two armed men with no more concern than traffic cops. The unmarked uniforms looked vaguely familiar, and that seemed to be enough for the average person. The Middleman's air of quiet professionalism helped things along. Clarence, or whoever he was these days, tried to copy it. Dealing with civilians without upsetting them hadn't been in the SEAL skill set. He constructed his order with some care. Protein and complex carbs, with no caffeine and as little sugar as he could manage in a regular restaurant.

"By the way, we heard from Sensei Ping while you were in the gym. He's here tomorrow," the Middleman said.

"Should I learn Chinese first? Or whichever language applies."

The Middleman gave him a look. "You should learn the greeting I'll teach you later. And all joking aside … pretend you're back in Hell Week." The most punishing part of SEAL basic training, designed with malice aforethought to weed out the slightest weakness. "Ping could end your career before it starts."

"He's your boss?"

_He can break you in as many pieces as he likes. _"No. But his opinion carries serious weight with the powers that be." The Middleman was fumbling for a further warning – without the actual words _don't sass him_ – when both their watches bleeped. Symbols that the younger man didn't recognize appeared on the faces of the watches. The Middleman looked tired. "Them again," he said.

The new kid looked around warily at the other people in the restaurant. "Relax," the Middleman said. "There's a reason we headquarter in Los Angeles. Anything we say or do could be part of a movie, as far as innocent bystanders are concerned." He tapped his watch; the symbols went away. "Get the check, will you? I've got to take this call in the car." He stood up.

Former-Clarence spent his last cash, and went back to the four-door black muscle car his new boss called the Middlemobile. A video screen in the center of the dashboard showed something green and bulbous that the new apprentice could only tentatively label a face. The Middleman was talking to it in a harsh, guttural language with occasional click sounds. The alien – _alien!_ – said something back and cut off contact.

The Middleman sat back and cleared his throat several times. "Grillonians," he explained.

His apprentice kept looking at him. "Oh, all right," the Middleman went on. "Grillonians are our nearest neighbors, at twenty light-years. Well, unless you count the Marxuachites. We have good relations with both races, but there's always some joker. Hormone-ridden thrill-seekers with nothing to lose and everything to prove. They get enough methane in their systems, and suddenly nothing's funnier than buzzing the local primitives to give us a good scare."

He stared. "Drunken alien teenagers?"

"In the Grillonian life cycle it's extreme old age, but 'teenagers' about covers the behavior," the Middleman said. The wildlife sanctuary beacons in the asteroid belt stop most of them. That guy was closer to us than Mars; I had to give him a talking-to. Routine stuff. Maybe once a year we actually have to fire a warning shot with the solar-flare laser."

"Solar flare laser," the younger man said numbly. "Beacons in the asteroid belt." Then, "_wildlife_ sanctuary?"

"The human race is a long way from the top of the food chain in this big bad galaxy, junior," the Middleman said. "Our status under galactic law is … complicated. Ida handles most of the paperwork. When it comes to preventing interstellar invasions, filing noninterference directives in the right language can be more valuable than a space fleet." The Middleman patted him on the shoulder. "So. Dessert?"

[*]

The Middle-dojo was on the main floor, not far from the Middle-locker-room, a mirror-walled space big enough for, at most, two sets of fighters at a time. Clarence entered it, the next day, without any special fears. The SEALs had taught him real hand-to-hand, for survival down in the mud and the blood. Not tournament-style playing around for points. He'd have to be careful not to hurt this poor old guy, since his new boss seemed to dote on him.

But Sensei Ping looked young, maybe his own age. _Don't mention his age._ Clearly limber and solid, under traditional styled Chinese clothing of black silk, but four or five inches shorter than the SEAL. It was hard to tell much more. He wore a Mexican wrestling mask in black and hornet-stripe yellow. _Don't mention the mask_. His dark eyes were imperious, shading over into anger. _Don't mention the Clan of the Pointed Stick._ Whatever that was.

Poser.

The Middleman gave Clarence a sharp look. About this time he was supposed to bend his head, and bring his hands together, and recite the Most Hallowed Verse of Greeting in a totally serious tone. There was no. Goddamn. Way.

He settled for a regulation bow and a "Sir," and they were lucky to get that.

Clarence was suddenly seeing the world at combat speed. The Middleman looked concerned, shading over into panic, and he started to say something. But _motion_ was already happening. Sensei Ping was a blur, a stroke of lightning. He was standing ready, he didn't let himself off guard in a dojo, but his balance was shot to hell and he was flying...

The wall stopped Clarence, a few feet to the left of the door. It hurt. "The earthworm arrogant beneath the ground withers and dies in the heat of full sunlight," Sensei Ping remarked. The mask turned slightly toward the Middleman. "A less than promising beginning."

The Middleman ducked his head. Talking fast, "Sensei Ping, he's young and he's brand-new here..."

Sensei Ping raised a hand with the same explosive speed. "Sensei Ping is well aware of circumstances. Giving a fool a sharp sword is like cutting the innocent down for sport. Sensei Ping alone will determine if this one is teachable." A flat, chilling voice, "Lock the door on your way out."

Ping reached down and pressed a thumb under Clarence's collarbone; pain ran up and down the whole side of his body. Clarence tried a sheepish grin. "Um. 'Like an unborn lotus festering in the mud, waiting to blossom...'" The pain got more intense. He stopped, breath whistling between his clenched teeth.

The Middleman took half a step toward them. Stopped, at another cold look. "Sensei Ping has spoken once." And the Middleman walked away. Stiffly, as if driven at gunpoint, but away. The door closed.

Sensei Ping sat back on his heels. "Rise up and learn, my student," he said softly. "We have all day."

It was never a fight; it was a beating. If he'd had his new gun – if anything in the dojo could have served as a weapon – Clarence would have used it. He truly believed he was going to die. Again and again he tried the best moves he knew; again and again Ping brushed them aside. He'd never seen such speed, never imagined the accuracy and perfect form that made the smaller man so powerful.

There was nowhere to run. Or crawl. Sensei Ping didn't hit him while he was down, not _hitting. _ Humiliating stings, that needled him into rage until he climbed to his feet and tried again. Sensei Ping was calm, even cheerful, however much explosive force he was exerting at any moment. For a while, he hummed. Clarence had no hope of survival or mercy, but he wished passionately that the humming would stop.

A disconnect in time. Clarence found himself curled up in a corner of the dojo, arms protecting his head, weeping. Three toes were broken on his left foot. _Those_ moments were clear in his memory, edged in fire.

"Truth is the daughter of time." Ping was standing over him. "Have you achieved clarity, young bull elephant? Are you ready to learn from Sensei Ping?"

No more pain happened. After a while, it dawned on him that Ping was asking a real question. "Uh." _Don't hurt me. _"What?"

"The Middleman fights always alone against terrible odds. The skills of Sensei Ping are a necessary tool. Do you surrender to your body's weakness? Or is your spirit prepared to learn?"

He understood the psychology; it wasn't like he didn't understand. Sensei Ping had broken him as purposely as breaking a wild horse. But still. The terror faded without leaving resentment behind. Acquiring that kind of skill would be worth anything. "Yes." He moved his tongue around his mouth, looking for broken teeth. Blood cracked from his lips. "Yes, Sensei Ping."

"Excellent." Ping stood back a few feet, let him get up. "Sensei Ping will begin your training tomorrow." He stalked out of the dojo.

Clarence concentrated on staying on his feet, as a spiritual discipline. After a while, the door opened again. "Tell you one thing, _I'm_ not cleaning this up," Ida said.

The Middleman rushed in after her. "Cla … kid. Are you all right?" He was visibly restraining himself from touching his student.

"I've been better." But only the toes felt like real damage, when he could assess himself calmly. Strained muscles, stretched joints, forced tendons added up to a frightening level of short-term pain but little permanent harm. "I think … I made some bad choices this morning." He leaned on the arm the Middleman offered him; he needed the help.

"I wish I could have done something." The Middleman's face was pale and set. "Fact is, there's very little I can protect you from. Aliens, extra-dimensional portals, demons, elves … we stand in the front lines. Nine in ten of us die taking that stand, one way or another. That's what it means to be a Middleman."

That point bit much deeper, in Clarence's current state. But his answer hadn't changed. "Somebody's done this all along, while we all thought we were naturally _safe_. Even me. If I bail out, that leaves you holding the bag alone." The Middleman had to nod. "So there you go." Clarence smiled, a little foggily.

"Speaking of which, let's get you to the sickbay."

"Darn tootin'," Clarence said.

[*]

He turned up at the next training session in a walking cast. With the Most Hallowed Verse of Greeting duly recited, Ping taught him how to work around the injury. The problem was relevant. Even more than SEALs, Middlemen were expected to fight on until they dropped. With a maximum of one Middleman and one assistant in action at a given time, they had no choice. _Rule one, backup is not coming. _ Clarence had been there before though, in the Gulf, and come out the far side.

The broken toes curtailed his running, but he was short on time anyway. Mornings were spent in the records room, reading case files that stretched over at least three centuries and five continents. Afternoons, sparring sessions with Sensei Ping that ended when he dropped with exhaustion. Over time, reaching that point of collapse took longer and longer. The pattern was simple enough. One by one, at speeds he could follow, Ping was teaching him the moves that had destroyed him their first day. The moves, and their counters. Slowly enough that Clarence's very best efforts could keep him on his feet, though any careless or unfocused lapse from the top of his game led to instant pain. Ping himself never showed hesitation. Clarence wondered quite seriously – since there seemed to be other alternatives on the table – if the man was human. It didn't seem to matter. Ping was teaching, and he was learning.

One afternoon Ping rushed him without any preliminary, a throw that would have sent his greater mass flying across the room. Clarence countered, and countered again, collecting nothing worse than superficial bruises. High block, low block, a quick shift of footing to avoid a leg sweep... Clarence found himself grinning. A deceptively slow-looking haymaker toward the side of his head. Their first fight over again; nothing had changed but Clarence.

Sensei Ping was taking a risk, committing himself to a known sequence of moves. Clarence bided his time, holding a little energy in reserve for one extra push. The vulnerable moment came, a high ax kick that strained Ping's balance. Clarence blocked with both arms instead of only one, his full weight behind them. Sensei Ping was supernaturally good. But by sheer physics, a smaller object hitting a larger one took the lion's share of the rebound. Ping teetered, almost staggered. He had to shift his stance, with swift fluidity, to stay on his feet.

Clarence shifted to a purely defensive stance, ready for anything, expecting some hideous retribution. Ping struck like a snake, an entirely new move, stiffened fingers moving toward Clarence's left eye. Clarence stopped it an inch away.

"Sensei Ping will no longer call you a beginner." And he smiled, clearly visible behind the head-enclosing mask.

Clarence grinned back, caught between pride and relief.


	3. Chapter 3

[*]

The alert light flashed while he was showering, in the Middleman locker room. Green light – not an emergency. Clarence welcomed the chance at some action. He took a few extra seconds to make his new uniform inspection-ready as he dressed. Especially with the 'gun,' if that was the right word, that the Middleman had given him three days into his training. It was angular and light and not at all based on gunpowder firing lead pellets. On the indoor range, on the 'training' setting, it fired blue beams of light that made robot targets convulse and fall. He wasn't sure about the 'live fire' setting. He handled it with at least as much care as an ordinary gun.

"Hi, kid," the Middleman greeted him in the control room. "Just a little chore. At 4:47 p.m. – that gives us two hours – we go to 451 Bradbury Way on the east end of town. There's a mixed-breed black dog, registered name "Scruffy," resident at the address. We catch the dog, take it back to the homeowners, and tell them they've got a hole in their fence."

Animals again. "If the dog's already out, why wait two hours?"

"On past performance, I'd say the dog isn't out yet."

"Why do we – why do our bosses care?"

"I don't know."

"How do they know the dog's about to make a break for it?"

"I don't know."

"What if we just call animal control?"

The Middleman held up a sheet of paper. "Orders. May I remind you, _you_ thought there were no such things as werewolves."

A definite point. "I'm not against it. I just want to understand the parameters."

"Maybe if we talk slower and use little words," Ida suggested.

He ignored her. "Does this make any sense to you? Sir?"

"For highly specialized definitions of sense," the Middleman said. "You get used to it."

[*]

Their orders took them to a suburban neighborhood high in the hills, long winding streets with here and there a view out over the city. The house they'd targeted was part of a cookie-cutter development, not very different from the houses to either side or across the street. The Middleman cruised past it at low speed, pulled around the next corner to wait. "First time you've been out of HQ since Tuesday, if I remember right," he said to Clarence. "It doesn't have to be that way. Just because we're on call all the time doesn't put us on duty all the time. It's California, summer's coming. Hit the beach, stare at the girls. Go to the library, even. Or wait for nightfall and find a friendly bar; I assure you this town has them."

"I don't need anything else," Clarence said. "I'm keeping busy."

"Being the Middleman is a calling, not a prison."

"I haven't seen you out chasing … social contact either. Sir," Clarence retorted.

The Middleman shrugged. "I'm a respectable widower set in my ways; you're young. It's a fine line to walk. The temptation's there to draw back, be something less than _part_ of the world while defending the world. What we know, what we do, sets us apart. But we can't give in to that isolation. Serving the people of Earth takes more than dedication. It takes compassion – and if we draw back too far, we risk losing that. Plenty of Middlemen have been married; had families, even. Don't go by me."

"I don't see how that could be possible," Clarence said. "Keeping that many secrets from someone you loved."

"You were a SEAL. You didn't talk off duty about classified missions, but that didn't have to make you a celibate."

"No. No, it didn't." Not the honorable, mission-critical secrets of his military career. The older one, stinking of death and dishonor, that had sent him to the Navy seeking rebirth and redemption in the first place.

_ For all the things he'd lost when he got himself thrown out of the SEALs and the Navy, Tamara wasn't one of them. He'd lost her months sooner, and with less justification. He'd done that to himself._

_ Women liked his looks, and the SEAL mystique was a powerful thing. He had never had trouble getting dates. Tamara had started out no different, a barroom pickup. He'd heard her exuberant laugh halfway across the room, and been curious. She was Navy too, support staff in the base hospital. Hardly more than a civilian in their hierarchical world, but she was deeply invested in her career. And her friends, and in him when he passed into that charmed circle. She was, he thought, probably the most emotionally balanced person he'd ever met._

_ Tamara's complex extended family was a time zone away, in South Texas, but they were the heart of her happy stability. Hardly a week went by without a phone call from one of her relatives. Hardly a day without an e-mail laden with pictures. She shared it all with him as warmly as she shared herself. _

_ Then-Clarence had nothing to share in return. The only child of two only children, he genuinely lacked a similar network to offer her. What he did have, he spoke about sparsely and reluctantly. Every conversational thread seemed dangerous. Something as simple as 'tell me about your dad' had the wrongdoing that had sent him into exile looming on its path. He considered telling her outright, but his courage failed him. Tamara was a strong woman with a deep well of self-respect. Violence against another woman, however ineffective, was not something she'd ever excuse. He put it off, day to day, telling himself that they needed to know each other better. Clarence lived in the present as intensely as he could manage. For a while, Tamara was willing to join him there. As he felt more secure he expanded his focus to include the future; not just the next mission or the next deployment, but a lifetime's worth with Tamara beside him._

_ They were already living together in off-base housing. He proposed, one night in bed, and she accepted with tears of joy. If they'd been able to stay in bed, just the two of them, it might have lasted forever. But the very health and stability of Tamara's family worked against them. Not that they set out to break up the couple. They welcomed Clarence with open arms. He was included in the long telephone conversations. Every e-mail asked after him or included a friendly message. He began memorizing networks of cousins and nieces and stepsisters against the inevitable visit. He and Tamara were able to get leave at the same time several weeks after their engagement. They went to Texas to induct him into the huge, affectionate clan; disaster followed._

_ The complex extended family covered a wide range of skin tones, from Tamara's very dark to nearly as pale as Clarence's. He had no trouble spotting the highest ranking member. Tamara's grandmother was ninety-seven and still living in her own house with intermittent help from a retired daughter. She had cataracts and hearing aids and had given up driving a car when she reached seventy. She didn't go to family reunions. Family reunions came to her, so she could reign over them. Her youngest granddaughter was the apple of her eye, and genealogy her passion. _

_ Clarence's transparent affection for Tamara and habit of saying "ma'am" won Grandma Tarlow's heart. She cleared a great-nephew out of the chair closest to her, in the small quilt-decorated living room, and began to draw Clarence out. His gratitude for the welcome quickly gave way to nerves. Grandma asked more questions about his past, or his family's, in two minutes than Tamara herself had in months. He placated her for a while with more distant ancestors. A three-times-great-grandfather he'd heard of as fighting in the Civil War was a real help. But the shrewd old woman kept the conversation moving closer and closer to the present, and she didn't miss a single sign of Clarence's growing discomfort._

_ He placated her with stories about Navy friends and unclassified missions. Then with stories from his earlier life that even Tamara hadn't heard. He had to step more and more carefully as he reached the danger zone; the chaotic few months after high school, before the Navy. His answers trailed off to monosyllables and long pauses. Finally, fatally, she drawled "For the good Lord's sake, boy, what are you so __ashamed__ of?"_

_ It was only in Clarence's imagination that the crowded room fell silent and every single soul_ _stared at him. To most of the family, the hitch in the conversation passed unnoticed. But Tamara, beside him, went still and thoughtful. He avoided her eyes and asked Grandma a question about some commemorative plates on the far wall. _

_ Nothing was the same, after that. As soon as they were alone, in the guest room at Tamara's parents' house, she gave him a chance to open up. Went on giving him chances, on the trip back to the base, in their shared apartment, in bed. The more she asked, the more silent Clarence became. He was unfailingly considerate, hoping actions would speak louder than words. He did everything he could think of to keep Tamara happy. Except what she wanted from him. He'd faced suicide bombers; he couldn't face her. Couldn't make himself speak the words to ruin her image of him._

_ When Tamara stopped asking, he was happier for a while. He thought they'd come to an unspoken understanding about leaving the past in the past. His training schedule was growing ever more intense, ramping up to a new deployment in the Gulf. Under the pressure of work he took a while to notice her own growing silences, her unhappiness. He tried to make it up to her in bed, but his touch was less and less welcome. The more her eyes accused him, the more he was afraid of the prospect of telling the truth. His only hope was that her affection, her trust in him would make excuses for the crimes of the past. Yet his own silence had eroded that faith and trust. One morning he woke up and knew it was too late. He'd broken their relationship past mending, even with the truth. Especially that truth. _

_ When Tamara transferred to a base in Hawaii, not long before his last deployment, it was only a grace note. He'd been living on the couch for weeks. For a long time he wore her engagement ring threaded on his dogtag chain. Then he stopped, and left it behind in a storage box that didn't make the final move from Navy storage to his civilian disgrace._

He wondered what she'd say about this job, if she still loved him. She'd never have taken it herself. The secrecy, the separation from normal life went against everything she valued. The man she'd wanted to marry wouldn't have done it either. He wasn't that man, maybe never had been. Another failure.

Clarence thought about telling that same truth now, to the man of honor sitting beside him. _When I was eighteen, I purposely crashed a car into my ex-girlfriend's house. People could have been killed. She was terrified..._ He shied away from the image. Ray's easygoing fellowship had become an important part of his life; he couldn't stand to lose that emotional bond. More, he wouldn't be allowed to _keep_ this life. The Middlemen had standards of conduct at least as high as the military, and fewer ways to enforce them. Middlemen answered only to themselves, and each other. They'd never risk giving unrestrained power to someone like him.

"And there's the dog," the Middleman said. Pointed.

They had a good view of the side of 451 Bradbury, where a tall board fence closed off the back yard. Puffs of dust, almost invisible at this distance, appeared under one point on the fence line. One black paw and one white paw followed it, digging furiously; then, as the hole grew, a long black nose.

A frenzy of squirming, and a dog with clear signs of terrier ancestry wormed under the fence to freedom. "We're on." The Middleman started the engine and moved the car toward the dog.

The dog ambled out of his owner's side yard, vigorously sniffing everything that needed sniffing as he passed. His tail was up and waving, dog language for _Whee! _The Middleman parked at the curb close to the house. Clarence got out. "Here, boy." He made a clicking sound his childhood dog, Captain Sparks, had always liked. This dog opened his mouth, tongue lolling, and danced out of range. _Nyah! Can't catch me! _When Clarence moved forward, the mutt bounded back a similar distance.

"Kid." Clarence turned back to the car. The Middleman tossed him a small package. "Don't be faster than the dog. Be smarter than the dog." Liver treats.

Clarence held one out, made the clicking sound again. "Here …" he didn't remember the beast's name. "Dog."

The front door of the house opened and a bushy-haired boy about ten years old came out. "Scruffy!" The dog bounced in place, clearly torn between affection and the joy of a game of keep-away. "That's my dog, mister."

"I know." Clarence dropped the treat; the dog didn't let it hit the ground. "We're with... animal control … just happened to be passing by."

The boy looked suspicious – the joys of universal don't-talk-to-strangers training – but relaxed somewhat when Clarence patted the dog. He tossed the treats to the boy. With affection and appetite drawing it the same direction, the dog ran to the boy and began an I-missed-you-so-much dance. Clarence smiled and turned back to the car.

As he touched the door handle another vehicle barreled through the narrow twisting street, a full-sized pickup truck going too fast. It swerved around the Middlemobile with an inch to spare and kept right on going without pausing. The little boy, already taking his dog back to the yard, didn't look up.

Clarence felt chilled. "If we hadn't been here," he said. "The boy would have been chasing the dog, maybe into the street. That truck could have hit him."

"I think so, too," the Middleman said quietly. "Seat belt."

Clarence closed his door and fastened in. "The people we work for ..."

"Whoever they are," the Middleman amended.

"How did they know? How could they possibly know?"

"One of the joys of middle-life," Ray said. "We get orders; we don't get explanations. You see why I mentioned God and time travel as possible theories. Maybe that kid's going to grow up to be a scientist, or a doctor who cures cancer, or a Middleman. Maybe this was just our good deed for the day."

"How do you stand not knowing?" Clarence asked.

"That's a 'we' not a 'you.' We saved a life. Are the details all that important?"

Clarence thought about it. And smiled. "Not really."

[*]


	4. Chapter 4

Time passed. Clarence added new languages and new skills to his repertoire. Sensei Ping went home to his secret monastery. More cases happened. Clarence helped the Middleman take a mystic fire opal ring from a collector in Toronto to a US government agency that was only slightly less mysterious. Visited a hidden fortress of solitude in the wilds of the Antarctic. Fired his new gun for the first time, for real, preventing a duel to the death between two supernatural beings in Seattle. Every mission brought him fresh confidence. By the time he walked into the control room one morning and found another Grillonian 'teenager' on the video screens, he felt like an old pro.

The Middleman was telling the Grillonian off in Galactic, an artificial language engineered to be comprehensible across as many species boundaries as possible. Clarence's eidetic memory noted that his boss was repeating, almost word for word, the riot act he'd read to the last Grillonian practical jokers. Nothing had changed but Clarence; this time he understood Galactic.

_ By my office I am a Galactic citizen of the first rank – the only one of my species, _the Middleman was saying. _This planet is MINE. Its goods, its lands, its thinking chattels are my property – and I do not consent to your interference. Stay away from what I own, or face my wrath. You know I have the power to blot your ship out of space … do not test my patience. _

Every syllable rang with truth. Clarence thought about the weapons he'd seen himself, the defenses of HQ, the casual mention of a sun-powered laser. The alien on the big screen was reacting, stammering out an apology, but Clarence was too frozen by his own reaction to notice. Power. Ultimate power, by the standards of his backward planet. Even in the most incompetent hands, enough power to grant a Middleman's every whim without fear of consequences. Adeptly handled, enough to conquer the world with an ease Hitler or Genghis Khan could have never dreamed of.

Power without accountability or limits, dropped into one human being's hands. And they meant to make it _his_ hands. When he'd created a horror with no more power than owning a used car.

The alien was trying to get out of the conversation with some scrap of dignity intact. The Middleman was letting him, royal condescension in every syllable. Some movement or sound got his attention; he glanced back. "Hi, kid," he said in English. "Just getting the damn neighbor kids off our lawn. Is there anything … what? You're white as a sheet."

He felt it. Clarence took a step back. "No. There's no way. This is wrong." He turned and fled.

The control room doors, steps, hallway passed like a blur. The front office. Ida was in his path, saying something; he dodged around her. Outside. The blessed normality of a city street, sidewalk, cars. That normality was an illusion, but it steadied him. He picked a direction and left the HQ building behind.

The Middleman's voice rose behind him, shouting his real name. Clarence glanced back at the figure in the HQ doorway, kept going. The Middleman could save or destroy the world any time he wanted. But he couldn't catch up to Clarence on foot.

They could find him, of course. The watch. Maybe other tracers, implanted in almost any item of his uniform, that he hadn't been told about. He wanted to strip naked on the spot. But that would leave watch, gun, who knew what other gadgets unattended for the first innocent bystander to pick up.

Part of him wanted the job, with an intensity and hunger he hadn't felt since he lost the SEALs. A hunger he couldn't trust. He knew he was competent as a Middleman's apprentice, knew how much his boss needed the able-bodied help. He could accomplish some real good, while he was the assistant. But this job led inexorably to the role of Middleman itself, and that was too much to expect. He was the last person on Earth who ought to hold that power. He'd been a fool.

The broken toes had healed; his long, steady strides opened up the distance between him and his almost-home. The physical effort calmed him. He'd resign, that was all. They couldn't force him to stay. Better, he'd tell them why. They'd be anxious to get rid of him, once they understood. It crossed his mind that the Middleman, as an ex-cop, might want to deal out some belated justice for the crime he'd escaped all those years ago. That was all right, too. Anything was better than the false position of having respect he didn't deserve.

[*]

He walked himself tired, and in his physical condition that took hours. Walked through shopping districts, residential streets, picked a path around highway on-ramps never meant for pedestrians. The sun was halfway down the sky before he was ready to move toward something, instead of away. He broke out of the cycle of his own thoughts and looked around. He'd reached the edge of a city park. Trees, a small play area in the distance, a gleaming blue pond. He sat down on the nearest park bench and just breathed.

There were ducks. Sailing across the pond without a ripple, waddling along the ground. They gathered at his feet and quacked demands. There was a gumball-style vending machine with duck food; he turned out his pockets for change. The ducks liked him, at least as long as the food pellets held out.

That would be a useful, simple job; feeding ducks. No worry, just the reward at the end of the day of seeing innocent living creatures happy. No responsibility.

But he'd tried a life without responsibility, playing pool for money on the southeast coast where the Middleman had found him. It had driven him to sign an organ donor card. Not because that was the right thing to do, but because he'd given up on being useful any other way.

He needed a purpose in his life. He needed _this_ purpose. And he couldn't, mustn't, have it.

A shadow fell over him. Clarence looked up, saw the Middleman standing beside him. "Hiya, kid." The older man was braced on two forearm crutches. "Mind if I take a load off?"

Clarence made room on the bench. The other man levered himself down, let out a long breath as the weight came off his feet. "About that marathon. You win," the Middleman said.

"I didn't think you'd run after me." More guilt.

"You'd have to be pretty damn charitable to call that running." Silence. "Want to talk about it?"

"You never said you were training me to rule the world."

"And wouldn't _that_ job stink on ice." The Middleman shifted to a more comfortable position. "Not ruling, no. Not as anything but a legal fiction, so we're empowered to negotiate with alien races. Stopping wars, feeding the hungry, talking some sense into the crazier parts of the planet … we've got nowhere near enough power for that. We're lucky we can keep the place from destroying itself or being destroyed, one day at a time."

"We have enough power to impose ourselves on the world by force, though," Clarence persisted. "No one else could stop us."

"True enough. The Organization Too Secret To Know works only through you and me," the Middleman said. "Ida's programmed to obey anybody in my job, if push comes to shove. Sensei Ping … would probably think it was about damn time. When I say he's old-fashioned, I'm talking about the paleolithic age."

"Power without responsibility."

"Great power always carries great responsibility, as Spiderman's Uncle Ben would say." Clarence didn't respond to the humorous tone. "But yes. I know what you're saying. The accountability for this job is only in what we bring to it ourselves."

Clarence stared out across the pond. "August 1992," he said. "I'd graduated from high school, didn't have any plans for college. I worked at an oil-change place, drank up whatever money I made. My father was worried, but nothing he said could make me change my ways. My girlfriend, Melanie..." A long pause. "I told myself that I loved her, that she was the reason I was staying in town another year until she graduated. It was nothing but pride. Having a pretty blond girlfriend, having _her_ love _me_. I didn't love her enough to care how she really felt. The closer we got to her senior year, the more we argued. I had a mean temper. I could always win those arguments... I thought I was winning. I was actually killing everything she'd ever felt for me. One night … it wasn't a different argument, it was just the last one. She broke up with me, and I knew it was for good. I stormed off, she went home, I went drinking..."

He couldn't make himself look up. "About four in the morning I crashed my car into her family's house. They were all home; someone could have been killed. The police came, fire trucks, ambulance. They were treating it as an accident at first. Some EMT's were checking me over. I looked up and saw Melanie coming out of the wreckage … she wasn't actually injured, but it was all in her face. I looked in her eyes and I saw a monster. Me."

The Middleman was just watching him, watching and listening. He felt a stab of the old rage at not being understood. "That's not just her opinion. That's what _was_. When I did it, I wanted to hurt her. More than I cared about anything else, even myself. Nothing I said or did afterward could change what I'd done. Been." He shook his head. "They didn't even punish me. Everybody in town loved Dad too much … they threw me out of town, but they let me go."

"Losing contact with everything and everyone you knew doesn't strike you as a punishment?" the Middleman said softly.  
>"There wasn't anything on my record," Clarence said. "I was able to join the Navy, clean … able to get into the SEALs. They'd never have had me otherwise. And you." He looked at the other man at last. "I didn't exactly lie to you, not in words, but I let that lie stand. The Middleman has to be trustworthy, above all. I let you think I qualified." He closed his eyes and waited.<p>

"Melanie Bauer went off to Northwestern in fall of 1992," the Middleman said. "History major, minor in teaching. The year she graduated she married a fellow student, David Farmer, and helped him work his way through dental school. Two daughters, one three years old and one fourteen months. She's fine. All of them are fine."

Clarence looked up wildly. "You knew."

"You think a small-town coverup could hold against HEYDAR? Kid, you still have a lot to learn."

"If you knew, then what am I doing here?"

"Because we looked at your whole life, not just one night." The Middleman laid a hand on Clarence's arm. "You did qualify for the SEALs, mentally as well as physically. That's real power too. Power of life and death … you know as well as I do how that power can be abused. But not by you. You played by the book, until you hit something the book didn't cover. Obey an illegal order and let your men die, or save them and wreck your career. When that happened, you didn't let the rules stop you doing what was right. Most of all, you didn't let the consequences to yourself stop you."

"It's not enough."

"The fact that you think so is why we trust you. Kid, a man who's never failed has never tried anything difficult," the Middleman said. "You failed. And then you learned, and then you succeeded. You know you have a capacity for evil. If you didn't know … _that_ would be a man I couldn't trust in the hot seat. You're the man you've chosen to be. And I like your choices. That's all anyone can ask of you."

Clarence breathed out. A new life, this life, seemed to open before him without deceit or dishonor. He wanted that redemption like he wanted oxygen. More. "If you still want me, I'm here."

"Then I'll say it again." The Middleman shook his apprentice's hand. "Welcome to the team."

[*]

Epilog

Two Years Later

Underground HQ of the Legion of Evil Overlords

One Point Five Seconds After a Laser Blast

Once, in another war, he would have yelled for a medic. Here and now it was only the two of them. Clarence's hands worked by themselves, stripping open bandages from the first-aid kit on his belt. They soaked scarlet instantly. A thumb on a pressure point was no more use. The Middleman was conscious, though glassy-eyed with shock. "Benny," he said distinctly.

The apprentice kept trying. "Clarence." The jacket was too heavy, but he tore his shirt for more material.

"I know you're Clarence. For another minute or two, anyway."

Impossible to misunderstand him. "Don't say that."

"Don't bullshit me, kid; I've got no time. Benny said, at the end, that it didn't hurt. He … exaggerated. Trying to make it easier on me. But I can take this; the leg was worse. It's your time now. The important thing is, don't be afraid. What was in the past can't touch you. You're so much more than that now." Breath. "You're going to shine."

"I'm not ready."

"You're miles past ready. I wish I could see you in action. Maybe I will; O2STK may give special privileges. Do the job, kid. Be what you were meant to be." Another breath, harder-won, with an agonizing pause before the next.

Both their shirts were a blood-soaked mess, useless. Clarence just held him. His partner's body was chilling, shivering weakly. "I'm sorry I couldn't be what you needed," Clarence said.

"You are. Good partner, good friend. Never sell that short. Trust Ida. Trust Ida, and don't try to do it all alone. You're going to need a student. Don't leave it too long."

"I'm not ready for that, either. I barely know the job myself."

"You'll be good. Nothing came easy for you. You'll understand if parts are hard for the next guy. Or girl." He coughed; went stiff with pain in Clarence's arms. "Do it now. The oath. I want to hear you say it."

"By earth, air, fire and water." The ancient words flowed out of him. "By the gods I worship, and the spirits of those gone before who shared this oath. I swear to hold the safety of the human race above all other causes. I stand in the middle, between humankind and all that would harm it. Nor will I use the tools and forces given me for any other purpose. Neither fortune nor favor, safety nor honor, king nor country; not life itself, my own or another's, shall I hold above this oath. To this I hold; by this may I be judged."

The older man relaxed. Smiled a little; his mouth was stained with blood. "There. You're the Middleman now. I couldn't be prouder if you were my own son. It's been an honor to serve with you." A ragged breath. "Sir."

"Please don't call me that. Sir." Clarence – the Middleman – protested, and knew it for a waste of time. Whether it was some real magic or only in his own mind, the oath had changed him. Was still changing him. It was firm ground underfoot, a shield at his back, fire in his veins. He had one place in the world, one purpose; nothing would be allowed to conflict with that any more. He was safe from fear, from temptation, from his own baser impulses.

From everything but grief. The man in his arms had gone completely limp. "Sir. _Ray_." No answer. He drew him in, solemnly kissed his forehead. He hoped that the … that Ray knew it, somehow.

The Middleman lowered his predecessor gently to the ground. The other man's gunbelt was too small for him, but he took the more powerful energy gun. "I'll be back soon." He owed Ray a decent burial. But first, he had a mission to complete.

He was alone, outgunned, without any possible help. But for the first time since he'd lost the SEALs, he was completely at one with himself. He had a job. He had a purpose. Everything else was trivial. The Middleman stood up and went to work.


End file.
